Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 21/08/06
Label: Rough Trade

So, Cerys is back - not so much a statement of fact as a marketing hook, surely. For a start she's still living in Nashville and hasn't physically 'returned' anywhere. Secondly, she never went away, music-wise - the organic, countrified "Cockahoop" was just three years ago (hardly an eternity) and not far ahead of that was alma-mater Catatonia's impassioned, epic (and underrated) swansong "Paper Scissors Stone". We were always within hearing distance of that huge, naked voice - a sound so bright, jagged and vulnerable it might have been hewn from chalk

As returns go, "Never Said Goodbye" hedges its bets - a mature but patchy offering teaming quirky pop with smooth electronica and some choral backing. It may lack the bite of earlier Matthews-stamped material but mercifully avoids the smug, redemptive tone of others who have ditched the rock'n'roll lifestyle for marriage, kids and a country house.

"Street Of New York"'s opening minute-long salvo of sturdy drum patterns and rolls, heralds in, like a master of ceremonies, a confessional tale about the singer's decision to leave her cosy Wales for the scary bustle of Stateside. And it launches in fine style a theme that runs through the album like a long knitted scarf - rootlessness, the search for home and identity.

Fifty per cent of the time the album keeps up the pace. "Open Roads"'s lithe lines incorporate a yearning, nostalgic, typically Catatonian anthemic chorus. The forlorn and sweet "Endless Rain" captures perfectly the non-specific melancholy brought about by dreary weather and contains some delightfully eloquent moping ("If I get soaked to the bone / Will it make me fully grown? / Will I ever be ready?"). The Supertramp-stylings of "Seed Song" also sit up and beg to be liked.

The same can't, sadly, be said of "Bird In The Hand" - a slice of AOR worthy of Alanis Morrissette or Counting Crows - and the clunky, awkward-sounding shoutathon "Oxygen", a sort of boozy backroom ballad with just too much instrumentation propping it up. This latter fault also prevents the confusing "Blue Light Alarm" from being the stand-out it should be. This may be down to the lack of direction caused by having three wildly different talents at the production desk - former Welsh pop star Matthews, rock producer and White Stripes engineer Stuart Sikes, and unknown Arkansas Beck-a-like Ben Elkins - an unsatisfactory set-up only arrived at, the press release hints, after multiple mind changes and problems.

It's on the gentle, dreamy Welsh-language lullaby "Elen", written and performed with Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals that she is at her vocal and melodic best - proof that you can take the girl out of Wales...

    by Anna Britten